The Mothman

 In a rather surprise move IMHO a manufacturer has come up with a cryptid scale model.  Earlier this year, Pegasus Models has released the Mothman.

It was the year 1966 when a strange creature surfaced in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. This creature was described as being at least 7 feet tall, with a humanoid body and a wingspan at least 10 feet in length. Its distinguishing feature? Two red glowing eyes that terrified anyone who saw them. For the next year, this strange moth-like creature continued to terrorize the residents of Point Pleasant. Thus, the legend of the Mothman was born.

Though many people are divided on the nature of the Mothman, it has been noted that the creature has never harmed a human being during its encounters. This has caused many believers to think that the Mothman means no harm, but instead tries to warn people of impending danger with its presence. This was later evidenced further with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, as many witnesses claimed to see the Mothman on the bridge just before it fell.

The kit is in1/8th scale and comes in a number of gray plastic sprues. 

 

Hehe, typical of a short production (?). Attachment points on one side, nothing on the other...

 

Easy attaching the parts after removing the sprue remnants.

 

While the parts are drying I turned my attention to the base. Got carried away, and almost completed it... ended up doing a two tone for the lettering, and Spaz Stix super gloss for the water.

Had the idea for painting the wing elements as a sort of metallic color. added silver has the base. 

The eyewitness descriptions have the monster a dark (black) color and that was my intention. We'll see... 

The first layer is V's Gunmetal blue which is a metallic, and I couldn't located by lil collection of Scale 75 metallic colors, so I just added V's Transparent Red to the wing 'eyes.'

 

Sticking with my ideas of having the creature black U thought a blue for the highlights could convey an idea of you're seeing this guy at night. But that didn't work IMHO. 

 

 

There's too much of a difference between the blue creature and the basically brown base. I could have redone the base to make it look darker (bluer), but I wasn't about to restart the whole thing over. The easiest thing would be to paint over the body with black and then highlight in a brown to tie both parts together - which is what I did, and with that I was done. Thanks for looking.

 

Northrop XP-79B Finale

 For the finale, my main job was to paint the plane and then add the canopy. Websites were saying it was white, the instructions called the color linen. So I decided to split the difference in that I took Ivory, and add one drop of V's Iraqi Sand which is a light beige color.

Next was the canopy. I found that yes indeed, the canopy was split vertically down the middle. So I was just a matter of gluing the 2 halves together.  They are to be butt jointed together, and I had a piece of Tamiya tape at the ready. I had the two pieces and touched it with some Tamiya thin,seeing the glue run around the joint. I then added the tape to make sure they held until the weld was complete. Thinking so, I gently put it down on the tale and let go. Immediately I felt my finger slowly pull away! What?! Yep. Glue came out of the joint and ran to where my finger was, leaving this very nice finger print. Insert multiple cuss words here. 

While I was waiting for the canopy to dry, I created a little tarmac with the plan of gluing the plane to the ground to eliminate the tail sitting or the need for the little post to hold the plane up. 

After the glue was dry I sanded the sanding marathon, first with some 3M sanding sponges from fine to ultra fine. Then I went into the 1000ths grit. After hours with canopy was smooth again, but there was still a cloudy bit to it that wouldn't go away - even after a few dippings of Future. What I ended up doing was mixing Future with V's Smoke and created a window tinting. It ended up mostly making all the work I did to the interior moot, but the cloudy mark was covered up. 

Thanks for looking. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Northrop XP-79B

 I picked up this kit a while ago, just because it fit my  idea of an odd ball plane. It wasn't mentioned on the box that it was a Northrop design until I started to research. 

The military, toward the end of WW2 felt they needed a plane that could ram enemy planes similar to what Germany was rumored to be designing.  Northrop came up with this design complete with magnesium wings to help the plane survive the hit. 

One was built and on it's first trial the XP-79B made its first flight on September 12, 1945, however, 15 minutes into the flight control was lost for unknown reasons while performing a slow roll. The nose dropped, and the roll continued with the aircraft impacting the ground in a vertical spin. There are two accounts of the end. One that test pilot Harry Crosby attempted to bail out but was struck by the aircraft and died. The other that in the spin, with such forces, he was unable to open the door open to bail out. The problem was identified, and Northrop was ready for prototype #2, but they were told with the war over, there was no longer a need for a Flying Ram. 

RS Models, out of the Czech Republic offers the 1:72 scale kit on one sprue with another smaller sprue for the clear windscreen. Directions were exploded views and as I will find out a little vague on where parts actually go. The decals are well done.

 As part of the design, the pilot was to lie prone to better help him with the g-forces. The model comes top and bottom so part of the cockpit area attaches to the ceiling of the plane, the other part on the floor. A box forms the confines of the cockpit.

A bench for the pilot to lay on is to be painted a leather color, and the steering goes underneath the bench. The first vague part comes here. There's no real indication of how far out the wheel sits. So I made my best guess. The color calls for the interior to be "interior yellow." I never hear of this before and thought they meant the zinc chromate color. I only had the green zinc chromate which bears no resemblance to yellow so I painted it lime green (a color which will be changed in the 11th hour).

The tub with two sets of where instruments went. I painted instruments the best I could only to realize that once the halves are glued together no one will ever see them again.  Across the front part of the cockpit more instruments are on a flattened bar.

This let to the problem with the bar and the steering wheel. With no indication of where it went, I had it in my head that it seemed possible for the pilot to be stretched out with his arms holding the wheel on the "outside" of the instrument bar.  

That was until I found this image - - 

 So a little late but the mystery of where the steering wheel went was solved. This solved another mystery of WHY would they make the windscreen in two halves, split vertically down the middle??  Why when it's like that in real life.

But that will come next time after the glue dries and all the clamps come off the plane. Thanks for looking. 

 

My Favorite Martian

 This time I closed my eyes, and stuck my hand into the pile, bring out the Moebius' My Favorite Martian kit.  It's a pretty nice kit including Martin's space ship and Martin himself in about 75mm. One annoying part is that shortly after  I first got this kit, I picked of the aftermarket PE set that went with it. Now, it's no where to be found. :(

 Images are a little out of order. Here is Martin. I added the skin color and then gave it all a wash of Reikland Fleshshade. Doing a little investigating I found that he had a green metallic suit (as per the directions) in the first season. For whatever reason in the second and 3 seasons his suit was silver. Being that the craft is supposed to be silver, I went with the green suit. After a few mistakes I settled on a white primer to start then I painted it all V's Aluminum, then Transparent Green. Getting a good shade of green made the Aluminum disappear, so when the Green dried, I gave the suite a mist coat of Aluminum. This was a good medium.

Planing for the hatch to be open, I had to get rid of the pin ejector marks.

Check back for more. Thanks for looking.

Jolly Roger: Hex Marks the Spot

 This kit brings back a LOT of memories as I did a few of them in my early teen years. I remember at the time, that I thought it was the best paint job I ever did - most likely with those gloppy Testor enamel paints.

 Anyway this was re-released by Round 2 and is 1:12 scale. Comes with a few sprues of parts and then the deck planking in 2 big sheets. I also comes with a large  sheet of decals. 

Starting right in I gave all the parts a coat of Stynylrez tan primer. There was some flash and the deck and box parts had a slight warp to them, but nothing serious. Things went so smoothly I even used the primer as the base color and started in with some Vallejo Dark Brown Wash.

My first mistake was painting the skeletons so dark. I knew I wanted them aged. But this was too much. Took a lot to get them to a dark ivory or sand color.

The seam down the two sides of the cannon was tough to get rid of. So I solved the problem by dabbing on some Tamiya putty. Got rid of the seam lines and also help the gun have that cast look. My plan was to paint it a mix of deep green and black, then dry brush some bronze over that. I added some of Citadel's verdigris paint here and there. 

 It was then a matter of painting and washing a LOT of wood grain. Only the standing skeleton had color call outs for his clothes, so I just closed by eyes and picked a color for the guy in the box. I wanted them dusty dirty, so I added some gray to the colors to bring down the color value.  But I also ended up with some brown pigment to get them even more dusty. The Standing pirates shirt had decals for stripes, but I just did them by hand.

Speaking of decals they were VERY thick. The standing guy had a headband in addition to the bandana. But the decal was so thick that even after 4 or 5 coats of Micro Sol, I couldn't get it to snug down. so I just pulled it off.  The other place I had a problem was the decals in the squares of the box lid. They too just wouldn't snuggle down into the wood grain. I the end I had to make a lot of slits in the decal film and it still wasn't perfect. Good idea to keep the box lid open. ;)    The map also had a decal, but I didn't want to sand down all the raised detail, so I just painted the map by hand as well. 

With that I was done. Thanks for looking.  

 

Masterbox Medusa

Another Medusa to add to my collection was Masterbox's 1/24 scale styrene Medusa.

I built this kit so long ago I have no idea how longs it's been. I was waiting until I finished a little vignette to show it off. Well I finally created the base, so now she's officially finished.

Built according to instructions, I took liberties with the paint job -

 The base I made was decidedly simple. Cork for the floor and steps. A plastic cake tier for the column, and a piece of foam for the top framing of the vignette. All of it got a few coast of V's white primer.

The vine was  homemade with the longest piece of the hanging basket liner thread I could find, and then I placed some of the seeds that look like leaves for miniatures dioramas, one by one on the vine. They are a tan, but I colored most of them green. but did leave a few as dead for contrast. Some pigments as staining on the ground, and a few resin skulls from Green Stuff World. That's all it took. Thanks for looking.

My usual comparison pic with the soda can. ;)

The Kappa Finale

Part 1: https://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-kappa.html

With the creature finished I turned my attention to finishing the base. I added colors to the river bed. In hindsight, I should have used more muted colors.

 Added a little greenery to the river bed. I was planning on making the  water clear or mostly clear.

 A closeup of the tree root. Not bad going from a real branch to roots bad from aves.

 Some plastic aquarium plants painted and added to the river bed. I also added some "leaves" to the shrub.

 The finished product. Thanks for looking.

The Kappa

I saw this kit at one of the Vendors's tables at the IPMS Nats in AZ.  The Kappa comes from Japanese mythology :

Kappa considered to be a type of suijin (water deity) that inhabits the freshwater areas of Japan. According to legend, the Kappa is fond of causing mischief and even harm towards humans. A Kappa’s pranks can manifest in the form of harmless jokes like making noises similar to flatulence or looking up a woman’s kimono. However, some Kappa are more violent and have been known to try to drown livestock, kidnap and eat children, and force themselves upon women.
Although Kappa are generally considered a force to be feared, there are some instances in which the Kappa are considered to be generous – though this most often happens when a Kappa is indebted to a human being. Some of the most common records of friendly Kappa are early Japanese legends that attribute the knowledge of bone setting and medical salves as being taught to man by friendly Kappa.

The kit contains two frets of styrene parts. There are no instructions, but 3 images and corresponding part number to show where they go - 

The build begins. There are no locator pics and in some spots it's a balancing act to keep the parts where they belong until the glue sets.

Felt the need to put some paint on the shell.

Primed in tan and then sponge dabbed in Mahogany.

A little Ivory added the the belly.

 Work started on the hair. There is no "cup" as the myth suggests, just a bald spot. I could have added one, but just didn't. 
While the idea of the tab on the hair fits into the slot on the bald spot looked good on computer, it didn't really work, besides the first one. In the end the tabs were cut off and the hair superglued into place. There was also gaps, and some Aves came to the rescue there. 

Painting 90% complete. The model comes with two round stones in his upturned palm that isn't added yet. I didn't look up the meaning of that. Nothing was mentioned in the summaries, and everything written on the box is in Japanese.

The kit comes with a super simple base of just a log stump or is it just a large rock?  Anyway too simple for me. So I took some foam out of my "foam box" and started  carving a shoreline.  He'll go on one of the stones in the water. 

Check back for completion. Thanks for looking.